Queens residents and immigrant rights advocates demonstrated Monday night against what they described as an increase in ICE sightings and arrests in the borough over the past few weeks. The protesters denounced that federal operations have spread fear among their neighbors.
Residents, immigrant rights activists and elected officials gathered on August 10 at Corona Plaza to denounce the sharp increase in ICE activity in Elmhurst, East Elmhurst, College Point and Corona. Organizers said armed federal agents have detained a person in the area almost every day for the past few weeks.
“During the last week of July we saw an incredible effort by authorities to tear members of our community from their homes, specifically here in Corona, where more than half of the reported arrests and abductions in this neighborhood occurred,” said Murad Awawdeh, president and CEO of the New York Immigration Coalition. “That should tell you something. The Trump administration has never been interested in security. All it has been interested in is generating more panic, chaos and fear, and all of this is rooted in its terrible cruelty.”
Awawdeh assured that communities and activists are determined to denounce these operations.
“But we have a message for them: the people of New York are united. People will continue to fight. We will defend our neighbors and we, as New Yorkers, will not allow them to come and sow chaos here,” he added.
The crowd that gathered in Corona Plaza showed signs against the immigration operations and chanted slogans to demand that ICE leave New York City.
Corona is home to a diverse immigrant community, including numerous street vendors who depend on selling food and other products to make a living. Councilman Shekar Krishnan, who represents Jackson Heights, Elmhurst and Woodside, also condemned the Trump administration’s immigration measures.
“Here in Queens we represent not only what this city is, but what our country is. We are the essential workers, the street vendors, the caregivers, the domestic workers, the taxi drivers and the small business owners who move this city forward every day. This city would not survive without our immigrant communities. These attacks and this hate are nothing new. We have seen them before,” Krishnan said.
“When they come for one of us, they come for all of us,” he added.
The demonstration came after our sister publication, amNewYork, reported on an increase in ICE operations not only in Queens, but also in different parts of New York City.
On July 30, an elderly woman was pepper sprayed in the face by a masked Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agent while recording on her cell phone in Inwood. On August 2, protesters gathered outside NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital after they allegedly saw masked federal agents detain a man inside the emergency room. A DHS vehicle entered the emergency area while protesters were protesting, and the detainee was taken out through another exit.
Immigrant rights organizations urge people who may encounter ICE agents to “know their rights,” so that they and their loved ones know how to act before federal officials.
“At Make the Road, we have spent the last two years training thousands of people so that they know their constitutional rights, because those rights are protected, no matter what people say, and so that they know how to exercise them if they come into contact with immigration agents,” said Luba Cortés of Make the Road New York.
“Together with our allies who are here today, we have gone door to door and business to business to educate our community and help them protect themselves. We have also trained neighborhood watch groups so they know they have the right to record these interactions, a right protected by the Constitution, and we have made sure that everyone knows how to report ICE activity,” he added.
